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Yup. hard wired is always better than wireless.
Do you really need a land line?
I've got one of those setups that use your electrical wiring to send internet. It actually works, in my case. If you must use extenders, a router in the basement won't work well. You really want the router centrally placed so that each extender gets the same power signal. Every time a wireless signal goes through anything i.e. a wall, a window, a floor (worse than a wall), a bookcase, or (even worse) a metal filing cabinet, it gets degraded. Then that signal is picked up by and extender which by their nature don't pass along the full signal, anyway. Then, after passing through more stuff, that signal is picked up by your second extender upstairs. Which has to send any signal that might be left through more walls.
But maybe you'll get lucky.

This is a funny story, Noel. And who knows where we are headed. But, as you know, even our Google overlords don't have access to hardly any of the information you listed.
That said, I do know where you're coming from. Because I'm in favor of an assault weapon ban, I visited the NRA website. Now that is a scary place. I filled out no form. I just clicked around to see what they are all about. Afterwards I got adds from them on my Facebook page. They tracked me down just by visiting them.
I have an add blocker on my browser. When a page asks me to turn it off, I close the page and go elsewhere. I realize these sites depend on advertising, but I have never bought, nor will I ever buy anything from an add.

I think if it were me. I'd throw out the HDD and get a 1TB SSD and be done with it. I have a 250 GB SSD and a HDD and the SSD just isn't big enough. I also do video work on my rig and the SSD fills up fast, so I keep having to clean it out. Next build will have SSD only.

I don't have any idea what's going on. But think about it. Clearly the update has pointed out some kind of difference between FSX and FSX-SE. Not any other software or driver. And LUA is the catalyst. What does LUA do for the game?

Everyone's experience is different. I can't imagine turning off updates. I know many folks do. I've never had a problem with one. I also can't imagine paying for AV. None are perfect. I've had to fix many computers where pay AV was installed. It slowed down the computer ( seen as a trade off for protection) and didn't work anyway. Maybe those people are a minority, but I hear stories that they weren't happy to pay for AV then have to pay some tech person at the store a couple hundred bucks to get their computers working.
Heck, just turning your computer on can be dangerous.

"Any advice on this and to which one is simple to use?"
I'm not sure anything about FS is simple. I used EI for many years, but Microsoft hasn't supported it for some time now, and claims Edge is the best browser for Windows. Maybe. Yet Chrome and Gmail have way more to offer, and all in one place.

Phil,
The fact that you felt you needed to uninstall for a scenery problem is a bit concerning. However, the thing about FS is that besides form being a blast, it teaches you about your computer. If you reinstall and right away something doesn't work, don't go any further, until it's fixed. How to do that? Some might disagree, but after an uninstall I run Ccleaner. Both the temp file and registry cleaner, a few times until it finds nothing. Everything else should be over written in the reinstall. But I suppose it never hurts to delete FS folders as well. I don't know about FSX-SE, but, as you know, there is a particular order in which FS needs to be installed.
Anyway, good luck.

Ah, youth.
Some years ago, on a trip to Memphis, we happened to know a Fed-ex pilot. He let a few of us have a shot at their full flight deck simulator. I darn near crashed the thing. But my step-daughter aced it.

I hope you have flooded some gaming sites also.
Maxed settings? Not all of them are worth it.
Forget HDD. Use only SSD. Any thing you plug into a USB hub is going to be slower and that much more clutter ( buy a bigger desk) and stuff to go wrong. The hardware you buy will be less important than how you set it up, and use, and take care of it. I don't trust a wireless mouse and keyboard for long term use. Wired doesn't get low on battery at inconvenient times.

Sure. My experience with a similar laptop has been surprisingly good. If you run default FSX, you can use higher settings than you might think. The sim would run even better with an SSD.
The problem comes when you start using several add ons.
It also makes a difference how you take care of your laptop. It must be running the best that it can. Keep it cleaned out, and don't have a lot of stuff running in the background.

Bob - that's sort of what I was alluding to; the added pollution (not monetary cost) caused by producing & shipping the car parts and completed cars around before the new owner takes delivery. The 40 year old muscle car went there 40 years ago and hasn't had to invoke that extra "production" pollution since that time...
Sure. But most any full sized car from the 60's got less than 10 mpg. Beatles got less that 20. None burned very clean. Many new cars get over 30 mpg and burn cleaner. No one cared about pollution in the 60's
And while there aren't really any left on the streets, They did their damage back then. I was a California smog mechanic for many years.

All manufacturing processes being equal, a new car creates less pollution than older cars.
I grew up in a small town south of Los Angeles. In the 60's, you could drive into Los Angeles on any given day and not be able to see across the valley the city sits in. Smog. Some days there would be warnings not to go outside because the air was unhealthy. California enacted some of the toughest smog laws in the country, and smog alerts are a thing of the past. We still can't build a gasoline powered car that truly burns clean, however. Catalytic converters do that for us.
There are big ticket items, like cars, that have their components manufactured in the USA. Those components are shipped to (for example) Mexico to be assembled. Then shipped back to the US for more work. Then shipped back to Mexico for final assembly. That's still cheaper than having all the work done in the US. My guitar says "made in Japan" even though all the components were manufactured in the US. It was assembled in Japan, and sold for about a third of the price of a guitar assembled in the US with the same parts.
Noel, you get to do what you want, when you want. Great. You value your lifestyle, but begrudge others their lifestyle simply because you don't agree with it. Other lifestyles might be just as valid as yours. You look around and all you see is stuff to complain about. Seems like a waste of time to me. You view someone who uses technology as weak and helpless. Real men go out and shoot their own food. They wear animal skins for clothes, and cook over an open fire. They only talk with other people who happen to be around them. If at all. I get it.